News | Saturday, 2nd April 2005
The Smiths: an academic conference
Legendary band studied
THE MYTH and legend of The Smiths is to be magnified ever further after some of the world’s brightest brains made them the subject of an academic conference.
Scholars and writers from around the world are converging on the band’s hometown for a three-day conference at MMU, where among other topics, academics will challenge the conventional view that The Smiths were quintessentially English by suggesting they are better labelled ‘Manchester-Irish’.
The unique symposium entitled Why Pamper Life’s Complexities will explore some of Morrissey and co’s lyrics, songs and music from the literary and cultural points of view.
Songs that saved your life
The symposium features lectures and talks by:
- Dave Haslam (Manchester, England)
- John Harris (The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock)
- Simon Goddard (The Smiths: The Songs That Saved Your Life)
- Sheila Whiteley (Women and Popular Music: Sexuality, Identity and Subjectivity)
The conference is jointly organised by Dr Justin O'Connor at Manchester Metropolitan University, Dr Colin Coulter, NUI Maynooth, Dr Sean Campbell at Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge, and Dr Fergus Campbell at the University of Newcastle, and takes place at MMU on April 8 and 9, 2005
Literature and cultural experts from universities in USA, Portugal, Japan, Ireland, Norway, Turkey and Australia join home-grown scholars and sociologists from MMU’s Institute of Popular Culture, including Dr Katie Milestone who will talk about ‘The Smiths, Manchester and Identity’ in a session titled ‘Manchester, so much to answer for’.
Singular impact
Dr Justin O’Connor, Director of MMU's Institute of Popular Culture, said: "The Smiths hit a particular type of emotion that hadn't been done before, quite a difficult one that wouldn't have otherwise have its place in pop music.
"Serious young men from LA to Japan really pick up on Morrissey's lyrics. They say something about failures, losers, underachievers, desperate outsiders. For that reason alone, I think it's worth studying."
Dr Colin Coulter, of Maynooth's National University of Ireland, said: "The Smiths have had a singular impact on popular culture. They looked like nobody else and sounded like nobody else, and their music had an emotional depth that moved people in a way that no band has managed before or since.
"In spite of their huge cultural significance and personal resonance, The Smiths have yet to receive sustained academic attention. This conference aims to put that right and to critically examine what the band meant and continue to mean two decades after their untimely demise.”
Gender, class and fanbase
Among the themes addressed at the conference are: gender and sexuality, race and nationality, a sense of place, the imagination of class, aesthetics, fan cultures and musical innovation.
Notable contributions include:
- Tonje Hakensen (Oslo University) “‘I did not realise you wrote such bloody awful poetry: The performance of words and music in “The Boy with the thorn in His side”’
- Kieran Cashell (Limerick Institute of Technology) ‘Don’t try to wake me in the morning…I will be gone: Subjectivity, Suicide and The Smiths’
- John Harris ‘Sing me to Sleep: The Smiths and the Demise of English Rock’
For more information contact Sean Campbell at APU Cambridge on 0773 256 5847 s.campbell@apu.ac.uk or Justin O’Connor at MMU on 0161 247 3471 j.oconnor@mmu.ac.uk
See www.mipc.mmu.ac.uk/stories
